In a story that is incredibly difficult to write a satisfactorily humourous headline about, the director of World War Z – Marc Forster – recently addressed the issue surrounding the change from the film’s original ending. What change? Well, as envisioned in the original screenplay, a massive set piece was to take place in St. Petersburg, which was rewritten as quite a low-key ending in a laboratory in Wales. It was certainly brave to enforce such a change of pace so late in a big-budget movie, but were their intentions honourable? Does it really matter?
Speaking to Movies.com ahead of the Blu-Ray release of World War Z, the director had this to say (spoilers follow):
We called it “The Battle of Moscow,” and it’s a huge battle with zombies and multiple other characters and ultimately Gerry defeats them by realizing that the zombies avoid him and go around him [after injecting himself with a virus]… We never finished that footage because we all agreed after Israel and the plane crash you’re battle fatigued and you really want the movie to be more quiet and you don’t want it to go into another huge combat situation.”
So it would appear that it was a creative decision, rather than a budgetary one. How the team behind World War Z could, in what is effectively a literary adaptation, veer between two such extreme endings shows just how different the film is to the novel. With this in mind, Brad Pitt – while promoting 12 Years A Slave – spoke to Variety about potential sequel ideas:
We have so many ideas on the table from the time we spent developing this thing and figuring out how the zombie worlds work… We have so many ideas and so much information–we think we have a lot of stuff to mine from.
There’s so much material in the novel that is completely ignored in the adaptation that there could be two, even three sequels on the way. The only problem would be titling such a series – after blowing their beans with World War Z, what could they call the sequel? World War Z II? Not Another World War Z?
Please leave your ideas below, because Brad Pitt might be reading this. You never know.
